Frank Gramarossa, project executive for the new Yankee Stadium, displays a Boston Red Sox jersey with the name of player David Ortiz that was removed from the ground at the new Yankee Stadium in New York, Sunday, April 13, 2008. The Yankees have ended a construction worker's attempt to jinx their new stadium with the buried jersey. (AP Photo/Frances Roberts)

On the day jackhammers removed a David Ortiz jersey from a concrete slab at the new Yankee Stadium, an .070 batting average removed the man himself from the Red Sox lineup. The Yankees missed the irony. It went by them the way a fastball eludes Ortiz these days.

They said they want prosecutors to consider criminal charges against the Sox-biased construction worker who entombed the jersey in August. They've tried to bring some levity to the story, but they can't. They don't know how, and that, more than anything, is the Yankees' curse.

They take themselves so, so, so terribly seriously. The importance of being a Yankee is stifling. By the time the season reaches October, the oxygen in the clubhouse has been depleted. The players are gasping for air, straining to carry their ponderous legacy. Everyone else, by comparison, is buoyant and breathing easily.

The club isn't entirely to blame. The tabloids in New York cover the team as if it were a royal family. They've made Alex Rodriguez into the new Princess Diana, a lovely young thing dangerously miscast as the invigorating force in a fusty dynasty. They turned the manager's predictable demise last fall into a thrilling coup, with the proletarian Joe Torre trumping the Steinbrenner aristocrats. No guillotine needed. The back pages were painful enough.

But the team's hubris enables the tabloids, almost begging for the excesses. For years now, the Yankees' fat payroll has been an affront to discipline and a deterrent to resourcefulness. Even if a Timex could get the job done, they wanted a Rolex. The current administration seems inclined to rein in expenses, but Sunday's decision to spend five hours wrecking solid concrete suggests an ongoing fondness for waste.

More than that, it suggests insecurity. When the New York Post first reported the burial of the jersey, the team half-laughed off the story. Within 48 hours, the mood had changed. The jersey had to come out.

Just seven years ago, the excavation wouldn't have been necessary. First of all, Sox fans would not have seen a happy metaphor in a Boston jersey buried on enemy ground. Unless, of course, it was Bill Buckner's, and then they might not have wanted to stop at the jersey.

Second, the Yankees ruled baseball. They had yet to lose the World Series to the Diamondbacks and Marlins, teams with a combined 15 years in the majors. They had yet to decide that Carl Pavano was a Marlin worth poaching, while the Red Sox waited for Josh Beckett to become available. They had yet to see Dave Roberts brazenly steal second base in the ninth inning of a Game 4 and turn an entire championship series on its head. Talk about digging the Red Sox out of concrete.

Now, Boston toasts Buckner, cheering as he throws the first pitch at Fenway's opener. Boston laughs at curses. The Yankees see the hint of one and call the district attorney.

The most consoling thing about the dig Sunday is that the team, and not public funds, paid for the effort. Public money for the project is supposed to be limited to building parking and creating green space near the stadium.

The Yankees could have accomplished more with that jackhammer if they'd taken it to some of their stuffy traditions. The team paid huge sums to Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi and then told them to stop being themselves. Facial hair isn't allowed. In Giambi's case, the clean-up wasn't so bad. The grunge look was getting old. But Damon's caveman look gave him a certain vibe with the Red Sox. He had always been a very good player, but in Boston, he was special, a character who helped keep everyone loose on the 2004 championship team. New York keeps him tidy, but doesn't get him back to the World Series.

The Yankees are clearly unnerved by their postseason failures. When they decided to unearth the jersey, there was a voice in their heads saying: "What if 10 years pass and we never win the Series? Will we be able to dig it out then and end the curse? And, if we don't take it out now, will our fans think we don't care that the Red Sox have replaced us as the game's superpower?

So they went in there and found the shirt. All in all, they did it pretty quickly and without destroying much of the construction work. The effort was terribly competent, and entirely in character for the Yankees. It's not October yet.